Professional photographer, Vincent Pugliese, shares his love of sports, one picture and one memory at a time.
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Editors Note: Vincent Pugliese has spent the past 20 years traveling the country taking sports photographs for a living. Each picture tells a story. Each picture stores a memory. Each a window into sport, and how we connect to it. In ‘Beyond the Lens,’ Good Men Project Sports selects one photograph and tells the story behind the shot.
With hockey post-season approaching, we continue our series in the locker room of the Buffalo Sabres . . . .
BUFFALO, NY: First Niagara Center
Access is a moving target in the professional sports photography world. Photographers shooting National Hockey League games are generally in a position next to the ice, making images through a circular hole cut out of the glass. They are the prime spots to get the up close and personal action photographs you see in the newspapers and magazines.
Away from the ice, though, are the images that intrigue me just a bit more. Each game that I shoot, I’m looking for a behind the scenes image that the fans in their seats or the people watching on television can’t see.
Last month, I traveled up to frozen Buffalo, where windchill temperates hit -40 degrees outside of First Niagara Center. Niagara Falls, just north of the city, was in the process of freezing over.
Before the game, I roamed the halls like I commonly do. Some teams, like the Pittsburgh Penguins, limit the access that photographers have to the players before the game. The Sabres, it turned out, were more than accommodating. The area between the Sabres locker room and the entrance to the bench was accessible and open to shoot in. It was one of the few NHL teams that allows access to their players in such near-at-hand manner.
As the Sabres stretched and prepared to battle the New York Rangers, I was able to shoot within a locker room type feel. These type of opportunities have become rarer by the year. Andre Benoit was the first Sabre to exit the locker room, taping his stick while I tried to quietly grab a few images without getting his attention. He looked up towards me, smiled, and asked if I got any good shots. I responded that I better have. We both laughed as the rest of the team began to file out of the locker room.
Zemgus Girgensons, the Sabres young center, placed himself in front of me. With his hockey stick across his shoulders, he stretched out in silence as he prepared for the Rangers. His positioning was eye catching for an image. With Girgensons filling most of the frame just a few feet in front of me, the names of notable Buffaloan residents in the background along with a few players against the wall, I had an image I was happy with.
Even though Girgensons was in the perfect position for me to make the shot I wanted, he never knew I was there. He realized as he walked towards to rink and nodded an apology.
He didn’t have a clue that he was in the perfect spot.
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Photo Credit: Author
This post originally appeared on the Into The Uncommon Blog.
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The post Beyond The Lens: Pregame in Buffalo appeared first on The Good Men Project.